Friday, December 31, 2010
Devotion...
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

“No matter how painful our early experiences were, our Essence cannot be harmed. Our Essence is waiting for the opportunity to reveal itself. In a very true sense, we are waiting for the opportunity to become ourselves. Our spirit is yearning to break free, to express itself ...
Oh yes, this one will be one to remember! I know there will be tons of New Year’s predictions coming at you from all directions, but remember how many of them fall far short of actually happening. That is because nothing is sealed in cement on our world – human activities and emotions constantly affect the frequencies around us and produce unexpected results. What is sealed in cement, so to speak, is the eternal movement of the planets and energies in space, moving in their created universal patterns, eternity after eternity.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Death -
Voices whispering a few last words,
Mind watching a final memory glide past:
When will that drama come for you?
VII.TH DALAI LAMA
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Death -

It is important to reflect calmly, again and again, that death is real and comes without warning.
Don’t be like the pigeon in the Tibetan proverb: He spends all night fussing about, making his bed, and dawn comes up before he has even had time to go to sleep.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Love + Life
Monday, December 27, 2010
Truth --

"I see and find beauty in Truth or through Truth. All Truth, not merely true ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures or songs are highly beautiful. People generally fail to see beauty in Truth, the ordinary man runs away from and becomes blind to the beauty in it. Whenever we begin to see beauty in truth, then true art will arise."
~ Mohandas K Gandhi
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Ponderance~

The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.
CHUANG TZU
Saturday, December 25, 2010
PEACE TO THE WORLD!
—St. Francis of Assisi
Friday, December 24, 2010
Blessings ~
purnat purnamudacyate purnasya purnamadaya
purna-eva-vasisyate
That is the whole, this is the whole; from the whole, the whole becomes manifest; taking away the whole from the whole, the whole remains.
~Isavasya Upanishad
CHRISTMAS 2010

Maintain peace through all circumstances since it is all temporary and illusionary. Reflect love, mature and learn from all your experiences. Extend love to all situations. When peace is achieved it becomes contagious and those around us want the same peace. Let it be Peace on Earth and let begin with me. Abundance is all around us. Set your goals, follow your dreams, and stand for what you believe in. Concentrate on a positive mental state and most of all…. believe in yourself. Everything that you have or everything that you see was ounce a thought. Spirit is wisdom. Be quiet and discover yourself by spending time along. Experience quiet time and bring a small piece into your life by meditating, breath work, or yoga. Become a temple of beauty.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Obstacles ~
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Ponderance~
— Vladimir Nabokov
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE!
happy eclipsing...
Monday, December 20, 2010
Change of seasons ~
So many people. So much to do.
One cannot be perfect for everyone.
It is enough to do the best that one can
And fix what needs to be fixed.
Do not make promises. Do not voice criticism.
Strive to improve your techniques.
Do not rely on others. Do the job yourself.
One can be crippled by criticism within and without.
Silence is golden.
Actions speak louder than words.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Ponderance~
Gradually, as we listen to the teachings, certain passages and insights in them will strike a strange chord in us, memories of our true nature will start to trickle back to us, and a deep feeling of something homely and uncannily familiar will slowly awaken.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Impermanence ~
— Deng Ming-Dao
Friday, December 17, 2010
KIndness --
But their echoes are endless -
~Mother Theresa
Thursday, December 16, 2010
ponderance~
That is my sincere path.
Goddess is in charge.
Everything in Divine Order.
submitted by Peggy Daugherty
Solstice tea cancelled

due to recent relentless winter storms and subsequent damage to the OMpalace, the winter solstice tea gathering on Dec 19th is regretfully cancelled.
Blessed Solstice, Full Moon/Eclipse
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Teacher & Student
If the teacher says "Meditate to realize God", or "Sing bhajans to realize God", or prescribes pujas and other practices, students may devoutly follow the practices in a mechanical way. It's good to remember that the purpose behind all these practices is to shut out external distractions and culture love in the heart. God is love. That is His very nature. If love does not develop, then the practices are next to worthless. Therefore, light the candle of love in one's heart.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Consistency ~
For best results, sadhana should be done every day at the same time. The Dalai Lama is a good example. He is a very busy man, constantly jetting around the world, visiting with thousands of admirers, meeting world leaders and so forth. But every day, he spends several hours doing his meditation and prayers, even if he is in a jet plane traveling across some ocean.
We may feel lost in materiality and that the odds of ever making much spiritual progress are close to zero. But even if we can adopt one small piece of sadhana with faith and perseverance, the light in our life will grow and grow. Saints tell us that our very nature, our very breath, is God. So how can it be that we long forget? To remove our delusion, we need faith, patience, and steady sadhana.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Nowhere and Everywhere
Generally after I give a lecture I follow up with an informal talk. Tonight Ill give a few facts about the system we work with, or at least the system of thinking that were involved in. And I prefer to have you ask questions because we get to the heart of the matter much more quickly that way. We get to what you want to know, while I could talk for two days and never hit the point of understanding for you.
This I consider a unique system or unique group. It has to do with self-definition. Some systems seem to be geared strictly to utility. To improve your business or serve as an anesthetic if your thinking becomes too traumatic.
Regardless, we are searchers after the truth. And you may immediately say, Well, what do you consider the truth? We dont. I dont ask you to consider what is the truth. I ask you to try to find inconsistencies and retreat from those inconsistencies.
~ by Richard Rose, beginning a talk in Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 12, 1974.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
REALITY
Sir Thomas More, I heard, wrote these words just before his beheading: “We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?” To feel the full force of your mortality, and to open your heart entirely to it, is to allow to grow in you that all-encompassing, fearless compassion that fuels the lives of all those who wish truly to be of help to others.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Deliver yourself~

"To deliver oneself up, hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hill, or sea, or desert: to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence."
— Thomas Merton
Friday, December 10, 2010
Buddha nature ~
COSMIC STORY --
This is a story from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
One time the gods appraoched Prajapati (Lord Brahma, the creator) and said "Please, O' Lord, give us your instruction!" Brahma said "Da". He asked them "Do you understand?" They said "Yes. We gods are involved in all kinds of celestial pleasures. "Da" means damyah, that we should learn to control our senses." Brahma was pleased with their reply and said "Yes, you have understood."
Men were also students of Prajapati. They approached Prajapati and said "Please, O' Lord, give us instruction. Brahama said "Da". He asked them "Do you understand?" They said "Yes. We men have a tendency towards greed and attachment. "Da" means datta, to give in charity." Prajapati was pleased with their answer and said "Yes, you have understood."
Next the demons approached Prajapati. "Please, O' Lord, give us your instruction!." Brahma said "Da". "Do you understand?" he asked. "Yes, you are saying that we demons tend towards cruel acts. You mean dayadhvam, that we should exercise compassion." Prajapati was pleased with their answer and said "Yes, you have understood."
The same words will be interpreted by others according to the needs and intelligence of the listeners.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Poetry --
When I think of death
it is a bright enough city,
and every year more faces there
are familiar
but not a single one
notices me,
though I long for it,
and when they talk together,
which they do
very quietly,
it’s in an unknowable language -
I can catch the tone
but understand not a single word -
and when I open my eyes
there’s the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
There are the stones.
—Mary Oliver,
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Prayer --
throughout the universe.
The horizontal threads are in space.
The vertical threads are in time.
At every crossing of the threads, there is an individual.
And every individual is a crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects
not only the light from every other crystal in the net,
but also every other reflection throughout the entire universe"
--The Rig Veda (Rig Veda version by Frank Joseph)
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Samsara
Our minds, however, are riddled with confusion and doubt. I sometimes think that doubt is an even greater block to human evolution than is desire or attachment. Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence. We have become so falsely “sophisticated” and neurotic that we take doubt itself for truth, and the doubt that is nothing more than ego’s desperate attempt to defend itself from wisdom is deified as the goal and fruit of true knowledge.
This form of mean-spirited doubt is the shabby emperor of samsara, served by a flock of “experts” who teach us not the open-souled and generous doubt that Buddha assured us was necessary for testing and proving the worth of the teachings, but a destructive form of doubt that leaves us nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, and nothing to live by.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Complexity --
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Upanishads ...

All the spiritual teachers of humanity have told us the same thing, that the purpose of life on earth is to achieve union with our fundamental, enlightened nature. It says in the Upanishads: There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and lead to different ends. . . . Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither like the blind led by the blind. What lies beyond life shines not to those who are childish, or careless, or deluded by wealth.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
be prepared...
For someone who has prepared and practiced, death comes not as a defeat but as a triumph, the crowning and most glorious moment of life.
Friday, December 03, 2010
PONDERANCE
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Meditation ~

In the ancient meditation instructions, it is said that at the beginning, thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea, and finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Ponderance~

Taking life seriously does not mean spending our whole lives meditating as if we were living in the Himalaya Mountains or in the old days in Tibet. In the modern world, we have to work to earn our living, but we should not get entangled in a nine-to-five existence, where we live without any view of the deeper meaning of life.
Our task is to strike a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overextend ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity.
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